Episode 41 - Spirit Island

In this episode, we become Loa or guardian spirits of an island where invading colonists have come to settle these undisturbed lands.  We take on aspects of nature to instill fear, destroy cities and towns, and incite riots from the peaceful locals to help take the land back from these invaders.  This complex co-operative game has a lot to offer with many spirits and adversaries across several expansions.  Listen to find out Jake's favorite way to destroy invaders and Rachel's plan for office team building.

Game Info:
1-4 Players
90-120 Minute Playtime
Ages 13+

Board Game Geek Entry

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Transcript

Jake: 0:13

Hello, and welcome.

Rachel: 0:15

I'm Rachel.

Jake: 0:16

I'm Jake. And we're so board, the Podcast where each episode, we take a close look at a tabletop game to discuss our personal experiences with set game to help answer the question, Will this cure boredom? That's right, we look at the mechanics complexity and replayability in a game to determine if it's the perfect alternative to let's say being at work and getting yelled at by patients because they haven't gotten their echo done yet. But it's only been ordered for five hours, and then having to explain to the patient, that you have other patients that have had their echos ordered for three days and still haven't been done yet. And you're the only tech in the hospital today. So you'll get to it if you can. Yep. And then later, having the charge nurse call you and say, oh, I need this echo done. And it's also only been ordered for five hours and explaining to the charge nurse that I don't know if it's gonna get done today. Because it's four o'clock I leave at six. And I still have stuff from yesterday that hasn't been done.

Rachel: 1:16

Isn't it great that we treat like hospitals and like patient care as a customer service industry?

Jake: 1:22

In case you can't tell I'm a little irritated at it. Anyways, before we get started, we do stream on Twitch once a week. Wednesday nights. and we start about 530 to 7 pacific time depending on the day honestly depending if i'm working that day. But we play all sorts of cool board games and you can come check us out we're at twitch.tv/soboardpodcast.

Rachel: 1:51

And a couple weeks ago we did play this game that we're reviewing today on stream. But we did it real bad. we did it wrong.

Jake: 2:01

We didn't do it bad we just didn't set it up correctly

Rachel: 2:06

We didn't do it right.

Jake: 2:08

But we didn't do it bad, like bad to me is disobeying rules blatantly. Like I don't want to do that. So we're not going to do that. That's bad. We just didn't fully understand what we were doing here. Okay. I am also streaming on Twitch. It's been touching go because my internet has been kind of crappy lately. So hopefully I'm getting that fixed soon. But I'm going to be doing a bunch of retro games on stream and I'm at twitch.tv/naughty Doc 541. That's NAU gh t YDOC 541. So come check us out. Rachel, what game are we doing today?

Rachel: 2:47

yatse

Jake: 2:47

abomination.

Rachel: 2:50

Crisis crisis. We're doing crisis today. No. Crisis is that elusive game that will always talk about but never actually do a review.

Jake: 3:00

We are going to do an episode on crisis at some point soon. That being said, we I think we did play it on stream recently. So yeah, we did do it either last week or the week before or maybe possibly the week before that. I don't know. We're recording this in advance. So suffice it to say we did do it. But today we are talking about spirit Island, which I'm very excited for this game because this is one of the very few cooperative games that Rachel says that is acceptable. And not only acceptable, but good. So that that tells you something right there. This game was designed by R Eric rousse and published by greater than games in 2017. This is a cooperative game about defending your island home as Island spirits or loa. I mean, they call them spirits in the game, but I really do think Loa is a more appropriate term for them.

Rachel: 4:00

That feels right. Yeah, the goal of the game is to defend your island like Jake said from invading colonist you win when the invaders are sufficiently scared off.

Jake: 4:13

Yes. And depending on how far you progress in a fear tracker, basically, that will determine what your win condition is. So the win condition actually changes throughout the game as you progress. It gets easier and easier, which is pretty cool, actually. So let's first start talking about the board.

Rachel: 4:33

Yeah, okay. So there's not much of a board, I would say I guess like an unfold double board. It's something that you kind of put together. Well, I guess there's two pieces to it. So you've got the map, which is something that you put together with these different tiles, but it's not tiles like in Catan, where each tile represents like a different type of land. They are bigger pieces that contain smaller subsections have different types of land within them. So each of these tiles has a coast on one side, and then these multiple other types of lands, you will select the number of tiles based on the number of players that you have. And they kind of fit together and become, you know, your island, essentially, that you are defending. There are icons on each of the different lands, indicating some setup stuff. So these are starting explorers, towns and cities that all represents the invaders of blight, which represents damage done to the land by the invaders, and daHan, which are the locals who live peacefully on the island.

Jake: 5:46

Okay, so I have to say this right away, because I'll forget about it. There's this Japanese candy that is like a cookie bottom, with a chocolate top in the shape of a mushroom. And that's what the dahan and remind me of even though there's no dark chocolate like color. That's what they remind me, I think I know exactly what you're talking about. And I can totally see that. They're delicious. I love them. But anyway.

Rachel: 6:15

So that's what the Dahan are. They're delicious cookies.

Jake: 6:18

Yes, they're delicious cookies in the shape of mushrooms, but not really.

Rachel: 6:23

So that's your map. And then you have the invader board, which is a pretty small little board that you kind of set off to the side or above or you know, somewhere near the map is contains a couple different sections. So you've got your fear deck, which are beneficial cards that trigger after a fear has been generated through your spirit abilities. And going through in gaining these fear cards is what increases the terror level, which is what makes the win conditions easier as you play the game. So essentially, the more fear that you generate, the more terrifying that you are, the easier it is to get rid of these invaders. Fear cards are earned by spirits when you have collectively caused for fear per player. Yes, and fear is caused by certain low up powers and destroying towns and cities. Those will all cause fear. Yep. So then next to that you have fear pool, which is just kind of where you're collecting the fear that you have generated until you get to that point where you have earned a fear card. And so next to that kind of up at the upper part of this board is your current terror level. And when conditions so you start at terror level one, which basically says that you need to clear the entire map of all invaders in order to win. But after you earn three approximately fear cards, you will unlock terror level two, which says okay, now you need to clear the board of what like towns and cities, I think, yes. And you can have just explorers on the map. And so you win at that point. And then terror level three says you just need to clear the board of cities, making it a little easier. Okay, so kind of underneath that terror level, you have the island health, this is a card that you will randomly select. They all say the same thing on the front, it says healthy Island. And it tells you to collect a certain number of blight tokens on top of this card. And those blight tokens are like that's your pool that you pull from when the invaders do damage to the land. And then once your pool is empty from on top of that card, you will flip it over and it'll say blighted Island. And that will give you extra things extra bad things that happen as a result of the island becoming sicker. And then towards the bottom of the board, you have the Explorer deck. And so these are cards that just contain different land types, and basically describe where the invaders are exploring building and ravaging the land and it moves from right to left. And so basically, you'll flip over a card and that'll be where they explore this turn. And then at the end, it gets moved down. So that'll be where they build next turn. And then that'll be where they ravaged the following turn.

Jake: 9:24

So next we have the adversary or scenarios. These are optional. Well, the adversaries are optional, and scenarios are optional, kind of. At the back of the rulebook, there is a chart that describes the different difficulties of the game. And I believe it's a zero through 10. And depending on how difficult you want the game to be, it will tell you what adversary to play and what scenario to play. The adversaries are specific countries that are invading your island. And then the scenarios are also specific For lack of a better term events that happened during the game, that may or may not make things more difficult. So next we're going to talk a little bit about the spirits or our LOA. This is honestly one of the most difficult parts about this game is deciding which one to play. That's how I feel personally, I'm like, they're all so good. Anyways, these are the players of the game. And these are all going to be working together to fight these colonists off of your island. It is a natural force that exists on the island to serve and protected. Each of the spirits has its own unique setup, starting abilities, innate abilities, and can get new powers throughout the game. The back of each of the spirit board describes the difficulty and the style of play. And it kind of gives you a easy, medium complex or very complex rating on these. But it also shows you what kind of abilities these spirits have. So if you're more of a an area control, or if you are moving enemies around, or if you are just dealing raw damage, or if you're a utility based character, it gives you this chart, which is pretty cool. That shows you the playstyle of the Spirit. So the spirit presence is indicated in the lands by colored discs that are placed on the board. So they're just these small wooden disks, and you will place them where you are at the beginning of the game. Each spirit has specific locations that you are going to be placing these discs detailed on the back of your board. This will also often determine where you can use your abilities. Because your abilities are often based on a range from your presence to disk of the same color on the same land indicate a sacred site, which can also be required for some of the abilities. And you can use your growth abilities which we'll talk about in just a minute to actually spread your presence. And your presence is a limited pool that you have available to you. And it's kept on two separate tracks on your spirit board, you have energy per turn, and the number of cards you can play per turn. As you put more presence out, you'll be getting more and more energy per turn by uncovering these and more and more cards per turn as you uncover these as well. So the energy is used to cast abilities. Every power card has a specific energy cost up in the top left corner that must be spent in order to use that ability. And you gain energy every turn dependent on how much presence you have spread off of that energy track. Growth is the first phase of the player actions. And these are different for each spirit. And sometimes, depending on the Spirit, you will either choose 123 Or all of them just depending on what your board says to do. And they are different actions that you can take to spread presence, pull cards from your discard pile, or gain new abilities, and sometimes gain energy as well. So gaining powers is one of the ones that you're going to be using a lot in this game. When you gain powers you can choose between major or minor powers. And the difference between these powers is the minor powers typically cost less and are good or beneficial. But the major powers are typically more expensive and do more damage do more fear do more destruction, for lack of a better word. When you choose this action to gain powers, you pull four from the chosen deck, and you choose to keep one and gain a major power. When you do this requires that you forget and permanently lose an existing power card. For example, if you pull for minor powers that you just don't like at all, on your next turn when you go to gain powers, you can choose a major power and just toss the one that you got previously. But you do have to each time again a major power lose one. So innate abilities are powers that don't cost energy, but cost elements gained from other ability cards or the presence tracks. As you spread your presence. A lot of times you will get elements based on your lower just depending on what you have available to you. These don't count against you for the number of cards you can play per turn. Some of them are fast actions and some of them are slow actions. And it's important to keep that in mind because that dictates when those things are cast.

Rachel: 14:48

And then we have the powers these are the cards that you can choose to gain. Well these are either your four starting cards or powers that you can choose to gain as you play the game. This is kind of The breakdown of what those cards look like. So up in the upper left corner, you will have an energy cost, this will be surrounded by a colored border indicating whether it's a slow or a fast action. The elements that you gain from the card are kind of a long the left side, the left border. And that's just, there's a bunch of different ones, there's like, you know, claws for animals, or leaves or sun, there's a bunch of them. And so it kind of highlights a couple different ones that are associated with this specific power. Then you have like, in the middle, underneath the picture, there's like a little bar that contains information about the speed, the range and the target. So your speed is depicted on the left side of that little middle bar. This is what determines if it's a faster or slow action. So fast actions are depicted by a red bird. And these actions take place before the invader phase. And then slow actions are depicted by a blue turtle. These take effect after the invader phase. So it's really important to remember and like include that in part of your planning that okay, this is going to take, you know effect after they've already kind of explored and spread and you can start to try to plan that out. But this is one of the really, like complicated parts I feel of the game is like appropriately planning these actions to take place, I keep running into things where it's like, I'm making plans based on what the board looks like right now. But it's a slow action, I need to be making plans based on what it's going to look like after they take their turn.

Jake: 16:48

And this is kind of what I wanted to talk about the different invader cards between the Explorer build and ravage. My problem with this game is I like to plan like three turns in advance when we're talking about it. And I know you've said this to me before, it doesn't matter. We're working on what's right now. And I'm like, No, it does matter, because we have to plan for three turns in advance. And we can do that by seeing what's coming up.

Rachel: 17:15

I mean, kinda

Jake: 17:18

I like to do that. And I liked the planning phase of this game. We'll talk more about that later. But I feel like that's something that they did really well in this game is the requiring you to cooperate together. But anyways, I digress.

Rachel: 17:34

Alright so, next to the speed in that middle bar, so in the middle, you will have the range. This describes how many lands away from your prescence you can cast this power. So a range 0 means it has to be in a land with your presence. it may also describe a distance from your sacred site so it's not a place with your presence but specifically a sacred site. And then next to that is the target. this is describing the land where the power is cast. it may describe it can only be cast in mountains or jungles or it can say any. but you need to make sure you're looking at both of these things because this needs to be within one land of my presence that is in a jungle and needs to be cast in a mountain. it can get really complex in all of that. it's like oh shoot i forgot that like it needs to be a presence that's in a jungle not just any presence.

Jake: 18:39

Yes They get pretty indepth on what you can and cannot target based on your powers. And this is really where I start, like I was saying earlier, get distracted by what's happening in the future as opposed to what's happening, right. Yeah, because, well, the thing that I want to prevent the most is actually the build. Yeah. Because if they can't build, they can't damage and if they can't damage, they can't play.

Rachel: 21:06

So the individual explores do damage, but not enough to blight. Not if they're alone, not if they're alone, which blight is what we're going to talk about next. Yes. So blight represents the damage that the invaders are doing to the land, this happens during the ravage step. And if the invaders, deal, two or more damage to that land, you're going to add a blight. If there is already a blight, placed in a place where you would add another blades, you add that second blight, but also it cascades into an adjacent land. And so it can get out of control, and cause you to run out of that blight pool really quickly and flip your card over to blighted Island really quickly if you don't stay on top of that.

Jake: 21:53

Yes. And that's a problem.

Rachel: 21:57

Yeah, that's a quick way to lose. So blight can be healed by certain spirit abilities. Some of them are like natural or good at healing blight. And some of them it's like, well, you have to get lucky and hope that you gain new powers that will allow you to do that.

Jake: 22:12

And some spirits abilities actually cause blight or are affected by blight. That's true. Some of them are actually more effective if there is blight. But that's like a really risky game to play. Because now you have to have blight out. And yeah, no, it's not.

Rachel: 22:29

I've been too scared to play one of those kinds of spirits, because it's like, oh, gosh, like I don't,

Jake: 22:35

I don't want to do it. I'm scared.

Rachel: 22:37

I don't know how to deal with this. All right. And then so we've already kind of talked about them a little bit. But the dahan, these are the locals that live peacefully on the island, they have to health and deal to damage each, they will attack the invaders if they are attacked during the ravage step, but they don't automatically attack anywhere that they're just in the same place as like explorers are towns that are being built. And there are some spirits that use the Dahan pretty significantly to do extra damage or you know, to deal damage in other ways using their spirit powers. But just kind of naturally, the way that the game is played, they will attack automatically if they are attacked,

Jake: 23:22

which is nice, because you can't be everywhere at once, especially depending on the spirit you choose. So that's a nice added bonus. The sequence of play kind of looks like this. As I mentioned earlier, it starts with the spirit phase, which is your growth ability, you must do everything described in the ones you choose. But you can choose to do them in any order. So you also then gain energy based on how much you have revealed on the energy track. And you decide your powers that you are going to play both fast and slow, and pay for those power cards. And this is where the game kind of takes time. Because this can take a lot of time planning and collaborating to make everybody's powers work effectively. And we have to pay attention, as we said earlier to whether or not these powers are fast or slow, because fast abilities will take place right now. Well, it'll take place right after the planning phase. And then the slope actions or slow powers actually take place after the invader phase, which we'll talk about in a moment. So also you aren't supposed to resolve the effects yet until until that faster, slow. And okay, I have a little bit of an issue with this and hear me out. This is my logic. It's a fast power. I'm doing it right away. And literally that's the next thing you do is the fast power right after the planning. So why not just do it

Rachel: 24:51

no the different phases like it's really important. So the other day we were playing and Jake had a fast power that was gonna give him more energy. And he wanted to do that now so that you can spend that energy on playing more cards, or playing for new, you know, abilities and powers. It's like, No, you can't do that those are two different phases, you don't do the card effect yet, you will gain that energy for next turn. I still don't like it. Yeah, that's just one thing that we're kind of constantly having to watch and monitors like, no, no, no, no, no, that's not happening yet. Jake's real bad at that.

Jake: 25:32

Okay, we're gonna need to talk about that. Because there is a fast power that lets people play an additional card. So how can you do that

Rachel: 25:46

that would get resolved during the fast power phase.

Jake: 25:49

That's what I'm saying is if they get to play an additional card during this game, or this round, how would they then be able to do that if they didn't choose that card and pay for it? You see what I'm saying?

Rachel: 26:02

I feel like it's a subtle difference. But it's like, I'm going to plan on using this card. And then we get to the next phase. Okay, now I'm using that card. Because like, obviously, that's something that's outside of the normal rules of the game.

Jake: 26:16

So if you can only play two cards, and you have chosen two cards, and I give you a third card, you cannot use that third card and pay for that third card until the fast power phase, right? So then you would not be able to do Do you see, do you see my my confusion here?

Rachel: 26:32

Kind of, but like, I feel like this is emphasized or like this is made more difficult to understand just because of the complexity of the game. Yes, there are other games where it's an easy concept to understand that like, hey, this card that you just played, or this thing that just happened breaks the normal rules of the game. And that's just kind of accepted. A lot of times in games, you know, you follow the rules until you receive an event or you know, something that causes it to break the rules, and then you follow the rules set by that event. Does that make sense? This is one of those kinds of things. It's like, normally, you wouldn't do that. But this card is breaking that rule and allowing you to play an additional card during the fast power phase.

Jake: 27:22

I disagree. But

Rachel: 27:24

you disagree. Like what is there to disagree.

Jake: 27:27

We'll continue.

Rachel: 27:28

Okay.

Jake: 27:30

So the fast powers phase, you resolve both innate abilities and power cards that are fast during this phase. And these can all be done simultaneously or resolved in whichever order the players choose, which is very important because some things will build on other things, as we kind of just mentioned a moment ago. You cannot delay your fast abilities to be slow abilities. However, you must resolve them in the phase that they are labeled. Unless you're a specific spirit that allows you with elements to treat a slow power as a fast power. There is one specific spirit that allows you to do that. Next is the invader phase. So blighted Island, we follow the instructions on the island health card. If it's been flipped over, then we do any fear resolve any fear cards that have been earned by the spirits. And remember that fear is for per player. If you have enough, then you will slip the fear card and follow those actions.

Rachel: 28:30

So just to kind of clarify on that you may gain the fear card at any point in time, like, you know, maybe you cause enough fear during the slow actions. But you don't actually get to look at the card and resolve it until this step. Yes.

Jake: 28:45

Well, once again, unless you are a specific spirit, you may be able to look at the top two and decide what yeah, there is one specific spirit that will allow you to do that. Yes. Next is the invader actions. First, they will ravage invaders damage the land and dahan for all the land types depicted on the Explore a deck by the ravage space. So if that is a desert card, any desert that they have presents in, they will ravage. However, if there is a desert without any invaders in it, nothing happens there. And the ravage actually does not happen for the first turn as the Explorer cards move from from the Explorer, the build to the ravage slot, so there's nothing in the ravage, they're just going to explore first, then they'll build, then they'll ravage. Next is the build invaders, build towns or cities in all land types depicted on the Explore deck on the build space. So if we move that desert into the next turn, now we're going to build in the desert so they have presence. If there are no invaders there, then nothing gets built, and explorers. Explorers move into lands adjacent to the coast and other lands with invaders as described inThe explore space. After we do all those actions, we advanced those cards. And we will see what's going to happen on the next turn. Next is the slow power phase, we get to resolve all the slow powers that were cast during the spirit phase. And the players once again get to choose what order these happen in, depending on what is going to be most beneficial or, or however, they would like to do this. And that includes not only power cards, but also innate powers. After that, time passes, and this is your reset phase, you discard power cards that were used this turn, all daHan towns and cities that were damaged but not destroyed, are healed. And then it's the start of the next round.

Rachel: 30:46

Do it all over again. Yep. And the game continues like that until you either lose, or meet your win condition. And losing I guess we didn't really talk about what losing looks like but that's like, you know, you have no presence left on the board. If your presence is like completely destroyed. Does that actually kick you out of the game?

Jake: 31:08

No, that makes everyone lose?

Rachel: 31:11

Yeah, okay. Well, it's thinking like, if there's like four people, you know, one person loses all their presence, like they can still get their presence back. But you only have so much like when your presence is destroyed, it doesn't go back to your board as something that you can use. It's like removed. And there are very limited abilities that have, you know, that capability to bring back destroyed presence. And so you have a limited amount and can you know, get overwhelmed and taken over and essentially, removed from the game in that way? Yes. That was the game. That's the game. Is that a long enough rule section for everyone?

Jake: 31:50

It's surprisingly not that long. Yeah,

Rachel: 31:53

I guess. All right. So let's talk about our experiences playing this game. So we've been doing it wrong. We already kind of talked about, we haven't been setting up like the towns and cities and settlers and everything according to the map. Like when you do the initial setup, which makes a big difference. It doesn't make a ton of sense to me, actually, with the way that the Explorer deck starts out the fact that you don't have ravage the first turn. It doesn't make sense to me that, like you've got all these towns and cities and everything built, but they're just not. They're not damaging the island yet. Like the way we were playing it is basically like the island is good and fine. And then the initial people start coming in and exploring from the coast. And so it kind of creates this idea or you know, this image of, Okay, we're good, we're moving along. This is our island, everything's happy. Oh, all of a sudden, these people are arriving from the coasts and like exploring our lands, what are they doing, and then they start building and then they start ravaging. And it kind of created this whole idea of, you know, this is the beginning of their invasion. The thing about that, though, is that you can get lucky and win in the first couple of turns by eliminating everybody off the board if you don't start with all that stuff. And so the game is not meant to be that easy.

Jake: 33:23

No, it's not. That being said, it still could be possible if you were playing a four player game, right? And you all chose spirits that just do massive amounts of damage. Like that's what they're designed to do. You could in theory, destroy everything from the island pretty quickly.

Rachel: 33:44

Yeah, potentially.

Jake: 33:45

If you focused on, like, just raw destruction, you could, I think, but we've already kind of talked about our experiences with this game. And I don't know if you can tell this, but I love this game. If you know anything about me, I love cooperative games. And I love complicated games. And this is for sure. A complicated cooperative game.

Rachel: 34:10

Yeah, I think that might be why I actually like it to, like, the level of cooperation required in this game is above and beyond what I have seen in any other cooperative game, it really requires that the players are all kind of communicating with each other on what they're planning on doing, what areas they're planning on targeting, so that you don't have people who are like, targeting the same thing or attempting to do the same thing. Like it's more effective to okay, you do this, I'll go over here and do that. And, you know, and like it requires a really high level of cooperation, which I really like, you know, you see in other games that are cooperative or semi cooperative. Like there's a little bit of that, you know, let's talk about dead of winter. For example, a Okay, so I'm gonna go to the police station, and I'm going to look for stuff there, because I know that we need weapons or whatever, you know, there's a little bit of that talking and saying, Okay, this is what I'm gonna do. But like what I do is not so heavily dependent on what you do. And like our success is not so heavily dependent on our ability to communicate and work together.

Jake: 35:24

Yeah. And speaking of dead of winter, you know, you have these board objectives each round or their, I believe it's called the crisis. So like, oh, we need extra food, and we need to donate it to this crisis, this turn, or we need fuel or tools or whatever. If you don't do that bad things happen to everyone. But it doesn't necessarily mean the game is over. Right? It's just there. There are consequences.

Rachel: 35:47

Yeah, I mean, it reduces your morale, which can end the game pretty quickly if you keep doing that.

Jake: 35:52

Right. But you can also depending on the scenario, you do, one or two people can carry the game.

Rachel: 35:58

Yeah. And maybe dead of winter is a bad example. Because that is also designed to be played with a hidden trader. What's another game that's like, purely cooperative, like either fields? Oh, yeah. So we haven't done an episode on either fields yet. But that's a cooperative campaign game. And, again, like, it's important for us to work together and figure out what we're doing. But it's also not terribly detrimental, necessarily, if someone kind of goes off and does their own thing. You know, like, Oh, I really want to go over here and get this one specific thing done. That's not going to cause us to just kind of cascade into destruction and lose, you know, there's a little bit of allowance for that, and just doesn't require that same level of teamwork. If it wasn't such a complex game, I would say that this is a really good game for like team building exercises, like, Oh, hey, like you've got a small group of people at work or something. Let's get together and play this and see how we can improve our communication and build on our team. But it's way too complex for that. There's no way unless you've got a team full of super nerds, there's no way everyone's going to be interested in playing this.

Jake: 37:12

I mean, actually, you and I are work, both of them are probably filled with super nerds.

Rachel: 37:17

Um, I don't know if there's people that are interested in this level of complexity.

Jake: 37:22

Yay, maybe not. Yeah. But yes, my work is full of nerds. And I'm glad. Yeah, I do love this game, I think they have done such a good job designing it. And the expansions that we're going to talk about in just a minute add so much replayability to this game, it's almost ridiculous. But before we get to that, I kind of wanted to mention a few other things. One of my favorite loas, and the game is I forget what it's called, but it's the ocean, the ocean is on the back of the board, it's described as a, it's either complex, or very complex playstyle. And the way that it works is your presence, you can only have presence in the ocean and on coastal tiles, but you are like waves bringing that presence in to the coast areas and then bringing them back out to the ocean, bringing them back into the coast, bringing them back out into the ocean. Which is pretty interesting, actually. Because one of the things that you can do in this game is there are loa that are really good at moving enemies around. So you can push like cities, towns, explorers, and if you have the ocean in play, anything that gets pushed into the ocean, dies immediately. And then becomes energy for you to use at any time. Which is pretty cool, actually.

Rachel: 38:51

Yeah, this is like one of the most amazing strategies I think we've ever come up with is like you get somebody to play, you know, the spirit that has a lot of that push and pull ability to move things around. And you just push towards the coast push towards the coast. And that's all you do. And then you let the ocean come in and wash everything away. It feels so good. I love that strategy.

Jake: 39:15

It does actually, I do love the ocean. And if we play this later today, I'm gonna play the ocean.

Rachel: 39:22

So the only problem with that is like, I guess one thing we didn't really talk about is that I personally feel like this game really is best played out to me three people, Max.

Jake: 39:33

I think three is the best. Two is good. Two is very good. But I think three is the best because then you can have like a control spirit, a damaged spirit and then a utility spirit.

Rachel: 39:44

Yeah, I mean, from a mechanics perspective, I agree with you. But the planning phase becomes so much more complicated. The more people that you have because you're trying to work with everybody and make sure that everybody is is being effective. And you can get stuck in that planning phase for a really long time. If you've got too many people that are trying to plan and figure out what they're doing.

Jake: 40:09

I mean, that's very true. We have definitely played games of this that go for four hours because of that planning thing.

Rachel: 40:15

Yes. So what I was gonna say is, the thing about playing like at two people is okay, if Jake really wants to play the ocean, I'm kind of forced to pick someone that is like that kind of area controller like that ability to push and pull, I'm kind of forced to play a specific type of spirit. And that limits my options. Whereas if you play with more people, Jake really wants to play the ocean, okay, somebody should play one of those kinds of spirits. But it doesn't necessarily have to be me as the only other player in the game,

Jake: 40:48

right? Or you don't have to choose somebody who has all utility or all control, then you can have just somebody who has some and then another player who has some as well, or they could focus on whatever they want.

Rachel: 40:59

Yeah. So it's kind of a balance, you really do need to pick spirits that complement each other. Otherwise, you're just not going to be effective. The ocean is not effective if you don't have people who can push.

Jake: 41:12

Yeah, because you can't get presents anywhere else except for the coastal tiles in the ocean.

Rachel: 41:17

Yeah. So like, you just okay, I guess I get lucky. And they're building here. And like, that's the only way I can be effective. And it just, it doesn't feel as good. If you know, you're not cooperating and picking complementary spirits in that way. Yeah,

Jake: 41:34

bringer of dreams and nightmares is the one that I really also, like, it's also a high complexity play. It does, like the damage on it is basically non existent, you almost can't destroy anything. Because actually, one of its ability says anytime you would deal damage due to fear instead. So this character is about pushing people around and causing massive amounts of fear. And fear is how you change that win condition to make it easier. So the more fear you cause, the easier it is to win. And I do like that. But once again, that in a two player game, that's not a great one to play unless somebody else is going to be doing damage. And so we have three expansions currently available for this game. And these add so much replayability. It is, like I said, ridiculous. We have the branch and claw expansion, this is was released in 2017. It adds two new loa, it's sharp fangs behind the leaves and keeper of the Forbidden wilds, it also adds an Event deck that has an event that will happen each round. So something will change. Sometimes it's beneficial, sometimes it's detrimental, all depends on the card that is drawn.

Rachel: 42:52

That really reduces the predictability of the invaders. Because without that, it's like, oh, we can see exactly where they're going to ravage, where they're going to build where they're going to explore blah, blah. And like, it's very predictable. And you can plan based on that the Event deck really mixes that up and makes it so like, Oh, oops, they're doing something different this time.

Jake: 43:16

Right. Which I really, really like actually. And it also adds beasts, disease, wilds and strife, which these are all different tokens that are placed on the board. And they act as specific deterrence for the settlers. Some of them prevent buildings, some of them prevent ravaging, some of them prevent exploration. This also adds a new scenario, a new adversary, and a bunch of new power cards, both major and minor for the lower.

Rachel: 43:48

It also added a ton of new island health cards, because the base game comes with only two of those. So not much variability, but now we've got a bunch of them that like different things can happen when you get a blighted Island.

Jake: 44:04

Yes, yes, it does. So the next expansion is jagged Earth expansion from 2020. This adds four new Loa, three new scenarios, two new adversaries, and a bunch of power cards, both major and minor. This also adds aspects and new fear cards and new event cards. So aspects are different variations of your innate powers. This also adds two more map tiles, which makes us now a six player game, which sounds kind of like a nightmare.

Rachel: 44:40

Too much like I don't recommend playing this was six people.

Jake: 44:45

I mean, I kind of want to try it, but at the same time it sounds like a nightmare. Yeah. The last expansion is the feather and flame expansion. This was released this year. That's 2022 It adds four new Lola a new scenario And a bunch of power cards as well, as well as a new adversary. So as you can see, like, there's 10 additional LOA that have been added. And I think there are eight in the base game. Yeah, that sounds right. Yes. So like, there's a ton of different combinations that you can play. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. Actually. Let's go ahead and talk about the ratings on all these though.

Rachel: 45:25

Yeah, so the base game is rated at 8.4. With 38,000 reviews, it is currently number eight on the hotness list and ranks 10 overall on BoardGameGeek, which is, that's pretty crazy, considering that this is, what a five year old game. Yeah, this is a five year old game. So that's crazy. But that just goes to show like it's really well designed. And it's very replayable people are continuing to play it this many years later. And you know, the expansions also add quite a lot, which you can see branch and claw has 8.9 and 8.9 rating out of four and a half 1000 reviews, and jagged Earth is a 9.4 only 2.9k reviews, and feather and flame has a 9.0 out of only 100 reviews. But that's a new expansion that just came out this year. Also, I don't think we normally talk about the weight that people give the board games on Board Game Geek, that weight is kind of a combination of our easy versus difficult and simple versus complex ratings, but kind of describes like the overall complexity of the game. So the base game is rated at a 4.05. And that's out of five being the most complex game ever. So it's pretty heavy. And then the branch and claw expansion is weighted at 4.21, jagged Earth at 4.54 and feather in flame at 4.75. And that's really just describing like the different spirits that you get in these expansions and the amount of complexity that that adds,

Jake: 47:11

yes, the feather and flame spirits, all four of them that are added are very complex or very high difficulty to play.

Rachel: 47:21

Hmm. And then real quick. So the base game is $63 currently on Amazon, which I feel like that's on discount, because we were looking at this for a long time. And it was like$90.

Jake: 47:34

It is $90 on the greater than games website, but Amazon has it for a little bit cheaper.

Rachel: 47:40

So I mean, that's a good deal, I would definitely recommend picking it up. You know, we were looking at this for a really long time and feeling like $90 That's, you know, that's an expensive game. I don't know if it's worth it, but 63 like I would definitely say is worth it.

Jake: 47:54

Yeah, and honestly, we were looking at this in the sense that $90 For a cooperative game that Rachel is sure that she's gonna like at all. That's true. I was all for it. Initially, I was like, Yes, this game sounds incredible. Now,

Rachel: 48:10

the branch and claw expansion is $30 on Amazon, jagged Earth is $55. on Amazon, I think that's a little more expensive, because it comes in a bigger box with like more map tiles and stuff. And then feather in flame is currently out of stock. They don't even actually sell it on Amazon yet. It's on the greater ban games website out of stock, but normally goes for $35.

Jake: 48:33

And actually heads up. I'm not sure why this is but basically all the prices we just listed, excluding the feather and flame, of course, because it's not on Amazon. Everything is actually more expensive on the greater than games website. Which I don't understand why.

Rachel: 48:50

I don't know. Yeah, if you can get it from Amazon. That's where I would recommend doing it.

Jake: 48:55

All right. So let's let's talk about our ratings.

Rachel: 48:59

First, we have easy versus difficult. You know, this is basically how often do you have to go back to the rulebook? How easy is the rulebook to read? How often do you have to look up things? How often are there questions? What did you think?

Jake: 49:12

I don't think it's all that bad. I feel like the rules are pretty well written. There's a lot to remember. But once you understand it, there's not a whole lot that you have to go back and check. We do have the disagreement about the fast phase actions. We do have that. However, that being said, I think the rules themselves I would only give it probably a five. Okay, that seems fair. So what I was gonna say is the rulebook. It's not written in an order that makes a ton of sense to me. So the way we explained the rules, I actually changed around a little bit from the rulebook because I feel like it's more important to understand like the concepts of what's being talked about what is blight? What are the invaders, you know, what are your powers, et cetera, is more important to understand those concepts before you talk about like the sequence of play. So I just kind of flipped those around. But yeah, I think you're right, like it is written pretty clearly. My other kind of gripe or concern about the way the rulebook is written is there are some things that it seems randomly decided that this isn't going to be written in like the normal way that the rest of the rules are written with a header and like, it's under a specific section, it's kind of a note off to the side in a box. And typically what I've seen in the past with like, notes off to the side in the box, that's normally an example of something that was just described in the main section of the rulebook. These are like new and separate rules that are only described off in this little section in a separate box. And so when you're going back and trying to look something up, you're like, Okay, you know, I'm in this section about the, you know, the invaders or whatever, I can't find the details on how you set up like the Explorer deck. Where is that? Like, it's not here in the regular setup? Oh, it's often this box to the side for some reason it does. I don't know why, like, I don't know why it makes sense to have that separated. And so that does make it a little bit more difficult. If you are trying to go back and look something up. It makes it a little bit more difficult to do that. So that and just the fact that there are so many rules, I think I'm gonna give this a SEVEN actually, really, okay, yeah. Well, next we have simple versus complex. The difference between easy versus difficult and simple versus complex is the amount of strategy simple versus complex is really analyzing how to use the mechanics to win. Are there a variety of viable strategies to use? How much strategy is involved in this game? This is actually a very easy rating for me, I'm gonna give it a 10. Me too. This is the most complicated game I've ever played.

Rachel: 52:06

Agreed. And like, the number of strategies that you can bring to it, like with the different combinations of spirits is infinite, it seems the different ways to go about playing the game the different, like, once you add some of those expansions 1,000%. This is a 10

Jake: 52:27

Oh, yeah, the base game itself, I think I'd probably give it an eight or nine, but with just the branch and clocks page and makes it the 10. Easily.

Rachel: 52:36

Yeah, I would say a nine for the base game, a 10. If you add branch and claw. This is the first time that we've given 10s on the show. So take that into consideration, I guess in comparison to the other games that we have rated. But if you're looking for something heavy, and very team oriented, like this is a fantastic game.

Jake: 53:00

Oh, yeah. I honestly would recommend this to I won't say everyone and anyone. Definitely people who are okay with complex games and heavy games like this is one of my favorite games I've ever played. Yeah, I agree. And lastly, we have the wrote versus random rating. What game mechanics change each play to make a unique experience? Do we have dice rolling randomized cards chances to figure different scenarios, personally, because there's so much there's so many things that you can change with different powers and different LOA and different scenarios and different, like this is not a road game at all. Agreed. The objective is the same and you're going to be doing the same things, ie, destroying towns and cities and causing fear and mayhem. But how you do that changes each game, and how the invaders are going to react changes. So wrote versus random, like this is probably as an eighth on the random scale I think.

Rachel: 54:11

I'm having trouble with wrote versus random lately. I wonder if we need to change this rating? Because again, I wouldn't describe it as a super random game, but I totally understand what you're saying. The wrote components I would say are in this isn't even necessarily wrote as in like from game to game. This is the same but like wrote as in predictability, I would say is in the Explorer deck and how you can see where they're going to build where they're going to ravage all of that. If you add the branch and clock expansion, that's totally mixed up, though.

Jake: 54:48

That makes it very difficult to predict. Yeah.

Rachel: 54:52

So I guess it's pretty high. I would also give it I'll give it a seven on rover seems random. But I'm starting to wonder if we need to come up with like different words to kind of describe this section. Because I think what we're trying to capture is like, what would be the most rote game? What do you think is the most rote game? Like what would be a one on this scale?

Jake: 55:17

Checkers?

Rachel: 55:19

Yeah. Okay. Checkers. Chess even I guess would be wrote, even though like, what we're trying to describe is your gameplay. Yeah. But like, two games of chess are going to be very unique based on what people choose. And I know we've had this argument before the player actions are not considered random.

Jake: 55:40

No, they're not according to you.

Rachel: 55:43

I know. But I'm starting to question like, maybe random just isn't the right word. So I don't know. Stay tuned to see if we if we change the terminology for this section. But anyway, that's my long rant ramble seven, I'll give it a seven. Okay, so yeah, that's spirit Island. Time to answer the question, Jake. Would you rather play this game than dealing with patients at work that are complaining about not getting their procedures done, even though it was only ordered five hours ago, and you're still backlogged from like three days ago, and other people are calling you and telling you this needs to get done now? Oh, no, but sorry, you're still backlog. There's like, there's a priority to the way that things are supposed to be done.

Jake: 56:33

I think personally, I would rather deal with hemorrhoids than work. That being said, I would much, much rather play this game than anything at work, regardless of how my day of work is going.

Rachel: 56:46

Hmm, yeah, I can quit my job and just play this game all the time. I'll do it. I'll do it right now. Sign me up. Well, there you have it. That is spirit Island. Thank you guys so much for listening. As always, you can hit us up on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at so bored podcast. That's S O B o ar D podcast. We love hearing about fun house rules that you have or experiences that you have playing this game or any other games honestly. You'll also be able to find pictures and short stories of games that we've been playing recently and other tabletop things. If you don't feel like doing it on social media, you can reach out to us on email at we are so bored@gmail.com That's w e a r e s o b o a r d@gmail.com. Make sure you hit subscribe so that you get notified when new episodes are available. secret secret secret. We're going to be going weekly, for the month of October. So you're going to have another episode next week. So you'll be glad that you're subscribed. Oh, what's this is an off week. I wasn't expecting a new we're so bored episode. Yes, we're going weekly, just for the month of October this year, because we've got so many spooky Halloween type games that we want to talk about.

Jake: 58:11

Well, this year work we are doing something a little different. Last year, we did all spooky Halloween games. This year, we're doing costumes.

Rachel: 58:20

Yes. So essentially games that have themes that would make good costumes.

Jake: 58:26

Stay tuned and see if you could figure out what costumes are for each episode.

Rachel: 58:31

Mm hmm. We'll probably highlight it. Yes. And lastly, make sure that you leave us a review. I guess not make sure but like it would be really lovely. If you left us a review and told other people how you liked the show. It helps us improve to get feedback. It helps other people find the show and just helps us become a little bit bigger so that we can do more cool things like massive giveaways and stuff like that.

Jake: 59:01

Thanks to a&t podcast management for editing this episode. They are professional podcast editors and can be found at a&t hyphen, podcast management.com. We also want to thank Mitchell Mims, the designer of our art he is currently accepting commissions. So check him out at m i s c. O S Ara on Instagram, or on his website at Mitchell Mims. That's mi ch e l m i m s dot c ar rd.co. Once again, we are streaming on Wednesday nights on Twitch and we play board games like spirit Island. We have done that several times now. And we will probably play it again soon. And we are at twitch.tv/so Bored podcast that's S O B O A R D podcast. I am also streaming on Twitch kind of I'm working on getting my stuff fixed so that I can continue to stream on Twitch for y'all. I am at twitch.tv/naughty Doc 541 That's NAU GH TYD OC 541. I do lots of retro games. I haven't been streaming it but I've been playing some amazingly bad but also amazingly good in 64 games lately. Come check it out. It's a good time. Make sure your notifications are on for that. So you are notified when we get on our stream. And that's it. Thank you all so much for listening, and we will see you next time. Bye bye